Spirit of Daytona hires Ricky Taylor, gears for championship run

After finishing third among Daytona Prototypes in the Grand-Am Rolex Series last season, Spirit of Daytona owner Troy Flis feels the sky's the limit in 2013.

BRENT WORONOFFSTAFF WRITER

DAYTONA BEACH -- Troy Flis' local Spirit of Daytona Racing team had a breakout season last year in the Grand-Am Rolex Series, so well in fact that it has left little room for improvement this year. But Flis feels like his team is ready to take the next step. In Corvette's first season in Grand-Am's Daytona Prototypes last year, the Spirit of Daytona's No. 90 Chevy/Coyote became the first Corvette to win -- in the second race of the season at Barber Motorsports Park in Birmingham, Ala. With Richard Westbrook as the car's lead driver, the 90 car finished 2012 with three wins and three poles and finished third overall in DP team points and first among the Corvette teams. “Last year was a big year for us,'' Flis said. “The last three years we really wanted to go back racing. Before that, Spirit of Daytona was a team where we kept building our program.'' Westbrook drove the car to the fifth-place starting spot in Rolex 24 At Daytona qualifying Thursday at Daytona International Speedway. Again, the 90 team was the top Corvette in the field. Flis' team has steadily moved up the ladder since it resumed a full-time DP schedule three years ago. After finishing eighth among DP teams in both 2010 and 2011, the Spirit team took a giant step up last year. This year, it is trying to keep moving forward. To start with, Flis hired a second full-time driver to join Westbrook for this season, raiding fellow Corvette team Wayne Taylor Racing by hiring Taylor's son, 23-year-old Ricky Taylor. Antonio Garcia and Oliver Gavin will join them for this weekend's twice-around-the-clock endurance race. Ricky Taylor's age belies his experience. As a second-generation sports car racer, he got an early start behind the wheel. He won six consecutive poles in 2011 for his father's No. 10 car and he and veteran Max Angelelli finished second in series points in 2010 and 2011. “About four years ago, I had Ricky drive a DP we were working on at a test in Savannah, and I thought, ‘Man, this kid's got a lot of talent,' '' Flis said. Taylor drove the No. 10 Corvette to a win in the last race of the 2012 season at Lime Rock (Conn.), outdueling the second-place Spirit of Daytona car, days after signing with Flis for this year. “We pretty much made the deal two days before Lime Rock,'' Flis said. “I was watching the end of the race, and his dad was there too, biting his finger nailes as I was. Ricky was leading in his dad's car, but I was thinking, he's going to work for me next year.'' Taylor, whose young brother, Jordan, will replace him in the No. 10 this year, said moving to another team was necessary for him to take the next step in his career. “It's so easy as a driver to be put in a mold,'' said Ricky Taylor, who is an engineering student at UCF when he's not racing. “Like if you're a paying driver for the first half of your career, people are just going to assume you're always going to pay for yourself (to drive for a team). And I think if you drive for your dad for a number of years, people will just write you off and never consider you for a job anywhere else. “(The Spirit of Daytona team) is so good. They just don't have the recognition yet I think they deserve. This is a good move from my career standpoint, and my dad was happy to let me go because he was getting basically another version of me.'' But Ricky Taylor said it will be awkward the first time he and Jordan go head-to-head on the track. “That's going to be really weird,'' Ricky said. “I don't know what my mom's going to do. It might not happen for the first two or three races, but it's going to happen at some point, because we are two of the best teams out there.'' Flis said the team overcame some growing pains with the Corvette last year. When Flis and crew tried to find speed at the low-downforce tracks by adjusting the car lower to the track surface, they eventually found they were putting too much pressure on the axles. “We kept breaking axles, and it wasn't the axles' fault,'' Flis said. “We were trying to make it do something it really wasn't made to do. Looking back, that really cost us the championship. So we went to a different product that would allow us a bigger window to compromise on the ride height.'' After years of buildup, Flis and company feel like they're finally ready to win a championship.